Forty Centuries of Christian Writing

Letter to Menas Against Origen

Justinian I · 482–565

An imperial letter listing and condemning the errors attributed to Origen — pre-existent souls, the restoration of all things — and requiring bishops to subscribe.

Against the Nestorians and Eutychians

Leontius of Byzantium · c. 485–c. 543

A technical defence of Chalcedon arguing that Christ's humanity has no independent person of its own but subsists within the person of the Word.

On the Acts of the Apostles

De Actibus Apostolorum

Arator · c. 490–c. 550

Acts retold in hexameters and read allegorically throughout, publicly recited over four days in a Roman basilica to enthusiastic crowds.

Against the Monophysites and Against the Nestorians

Leontius of Jerusalem

An argument that the humanity of Christ is real and complete but has no independent subsistence of its own — it exists in the person of the Word rather than in a person of its own.

The Synodical Canons

Mar Aba I · d. 552

Rulings by a convert from Zoroastrianism who became patriarch, chiefly on marriage law, forbidding the close-kin unions customary in Persian society.

Abridgement of the Canons

Breviatio Canonum

Ferrandus of Carthage · d. c. 546

Two hundred and thirty-two canons drawn from Greek and African councils and rearranged by subject rather than by council.

In Defence of the Three Chapters

Facundus of Hermiane · 6th century

Twelve books arguing that condemning long-dead theologians to appease the Miaphysites betrays Chalcedon, addressed to the emperor who was doing it.

Exposition of the Psalms

Expositio Psalmorum

Cassiodorus · c. 485–c. 585

A commentary on all one hundred and fifty psalms that pauses constantly to identify figures of speech, treating the psalter as a textbook of rhetoric as well as prayer.

The Cave of Treasures

Anonymous

Sacred history from Adam to Pentecost, hung on one idea: Adam was buried with gold, myrrh, and frankincense in a cave beneath Eden, Noah carried the body onto the ark, and it was finally laid at Golgotha — so that Christ's blood ran down onto Adam's skull.

Christian Topography

Cosmas Indicopleustes · 6th century

A merchant-turned-monk argues that the universe is shaped like the tabernacle of Moses, and reports at first hand on the Christians of Ceylon and the Malabar coast.

The Chronicle

Pseudo-Zachariah of Mytilene

A Syriac compilation covering the fifth and sixth centuries from a Miaphysite standpoint, incorporating an earlier Greek history now lost.

The Collection in Fifty Titles

John Scholasticus · d. 577

The canons of the councils and the fathers rearranged out of chronological order and under fifty subject headings, so that a bishop with a question could look it up instead of reading everything.

Commentary on the Apocalypse

Oecumenius

The earliest surviving Greek commentary on Revelation, read almost entirely as already fulfilled in the incarnation and the passion rather than as a map of the future. The woman clothed with the sun is Mary; the thousand years are the present age.

The Penitential of Finnian

Finnian · 6th century

A tariff of penances matching each sin with its remedy, and prescribing that contraries be cured by contraries — the greedy to give, the angry to be patient.

The Origin and Deeds of the Goths

Getica

Jordanes · 6th century

A condensed version of Cassiodorus's lost Gothic history, tracing the Goths from Scandinavia to Italy and describing the battle against Attila.

The Wars

Procopius of Caesarea · c. 500 – c. 565

Eight books on Justinian's campaigns in Persia, Africa, and Italy, by the secretary who accompanied Belisarius through most of them — including the fullest ancient description of a pandemic, the plague that reached Constantinople in 542.

The Arbiter

Diaitetes

John Philoponus · c. 490 – c. 570

An attempt to settle Chalcedon by defining the terms philosophically: nature means a particular thing, not a general kind, so two natures would mean two individuals. Pressed to its conclusion by his opponents, the same logic made the Trinity three particulars.

The Secret History

Anecdota

Procopius of Caesarea · c. 500 – c. 565

The same author on the same reign, written for a drawer: Justinian as a demon who walked the palace at night without a head, Theodora's career before the throne recounted in detail no other ancient text matches, and a body count in the millions.

The Anathemas of the Second Council of Constantinople

The Second Council of Constantinople

Fourteen anathemas condemning the Three Chapters and clarifying Chalcedon in Cyrilline terms, with Origenism condemned in the same period.

The Constitutum

Vigilius · d. 555

A pope, held in Constantinople and pressed by Justinian to condemn three long-dead theologians, issues a ruling that condemns sixty propositions of Theodore of Mopsuestia while refusing to condemn the men, since they died in the church's peace. The council ignored it and anathematised him instead.

The Buildings

Procopius of Caesarea · c. 500 – c. 565

A catalogue of Justinian's construction across the empire, opening with Hagia Sophia — a dome that seems not to rest on solid masonry but to hang by a golden chain from heaven — and running on through churches, forts, cisterns, and bridges.

The Tripartite History

Historia Ecclesiastica Tripartita

Cassiodorus and Epiphanius Scholasticus

Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret translated and woven into a single Latin narrative for readers who could no longer manage Greek.

Lives of the Monks of Palestine

Cyril of Scythopolis · c. 525–c. 559

Seven lives of the founders of the Judean desert monasteries, written by a monk who interviewed survivors and consulted archives, with dates given precisely.

On the Creation of the World

De Opificio Mundi

John Philoponus · c. 490 – c. 570

A hexaemeron by a working physicist, arguing that Moses wrote for ordinary people rather than to teach astronomy, and that God set the world running with its own powers rather than pushing each thing along — the heavens and the earth being made of the same kind of matter.

The Akathist Hymn

Anonymous

Twenty-four stanzas in alphabetical order addressed to the Mother of God, built almost entirely of salutations beginning with Hail.

The Discourses

Dorotheus of Gaza · c. 505–c. 565

Seventeen talks to his own monks on humility, refusing to trust one's own judgement, and bearing with people — including the image of God as the centre of a circle from which all lives are radii.

Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning

Institutiones

Cassiodorus · c. 485–c. 585

A reading programme for the monks of his own foundation: first the books of scripture and their commentators, then the seven liberal arts, with instructions on copying accurately.

Description of Hagia Sophia

Paul the Silentiary · d. c. 575

A poem recited before Justinian at the rededication after the dome fell and was rebuilt: over a thousand lines on marble quarried from every province, on the silver screen and the altar, and on the lamps at night making the church visible to sailors far out at sea.

The Chronicle

Chronographia

John Malalas · c. 491 – c. 578

World history from Adam to Justinian in eighteen books, written in the spoken Greek of the streets rather than the literary language, and cheerfully mixing myth, scripture, chariot-racing factions, and what people were wearing.

In Praise of Justin II

Corippus · 6th century

A verse panegyric describing an imperial accession in Constantinople in ceremonial detail — the lying-in-state, the coronation, the reception of barbarian envoys.

The Chronicle

Victor of Tunnuna · d. c. 570

An African bishop's year-by-year record, written across a decade of imprisonment and exile for refusing to condemn the Three Chapters, and ending at the year he ran out of freedom to write.

Vexilla Regis and the Passion Hymns

Venantius Fortunatus · c. 530–c. 609

Hymns written for the arrival of a relic of the cross at Poitiers, singing of the tree on which the price of the world hung.

Lives of the Eastern Saints

John of Ephesus · c. 507–c. 588

Fifty-eight portraits of Syrian ascetics the author knew, many of them women, and many living in hiding during the persecution of anti-Chalcedonians.

Altus Prosator

Attributed to Columba · 521–597

An abecedarian hymn running from the Trinity before creation through the fall of the angels to the last judgement, in dense and deliberately difficult Latin.

The Liturgical Poems

Piyyutim

Yannai

Hebrew poems for the sabbath service in Byzantine Palestine, built on the weekly Torah portion, rhymed and alphabetically acrostic, and signing the poet's name into the verse. Some are sharply hostile to Esau, meaning Rome, meaning the church.

Rules for an Honest Life

Formula Vitae Honestae

Martin of Braga · c. 520 – 579

A short handbook of the four cardinal virtues for a Suevic king, drawn almost entirely from Seneca and containing not one scriptural quotation or Christian doctrine — written by a bishop, for a recent convert, as the way in.

On the Correction of Rustics

De Correctione Rusticorum

Martin of Braga · c. 520–580

A sermon for country people explaining, in simple terms, why the days of the week are named after demons and why charms and auguries should be abandoned.

The Life of Saint Martin

Vita Sancti Martini

Venantius Fortunatus · c. 530 – c. 609

Sulpicius Severus's prose life turned into two thousand two hundred lines of hexameter by an Italian poet who had come to Gaul after his own eyes were cured at Martin's shrine, and stayed.

The Histories

Agathias · c. 530 – c. 582

A continuation of Procopius by a working lawyer and poet, covering the last Gothic campaigns and the Persian war, and containing a long digression on Zoroastrian religion and Sasanian royal history drawn from the Persian archives.

The Life of Radegund

Venantius Fortunatus · c. 530 – c. 609

A Thuringian princess taken as war booty by the Frankish king who had killed her family, married to him, and eventually escaped to found a monastery at Poitiers. Fortunatus, her friend, describes the fasting, the iron chains, and the burns she inflicted on herself.